Astolaf.208
net.misc
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!cbosg!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!hastings
Mon Mar  8 21:47:52 1982
DEC WARZ
Due to momentary lapse of conciousness, the previous episode in the
continuing saga came out in net.general.  We'll make it up to you...
maybe later.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Even Further Adventures of Luke Vaxhacker                Episode n+2

The Milliamp Falcon hurtles on through system space...

Con Solo finished checking the various control and status registers, finally
convinced himself that they had lost the Bus Signals as they passed the
terminator.  As he returned from the I/O page, he smelled smoke.
Solo wasn't concerned--the Bookie always got a little hot under the collar
when he was losing at chess.  In fact, RS232 had just executed a particularly
clever MOV that had blocked the Bookie's data paths.  The Bookie, who had
been setting the odds on the game, was caught holding all the cards.  A
little strange for a chess game...

Across the room, Luke was too busy practicing bit-slice technique to notice
the commotion.

"On a word boundary, Luke," said PDP-1. "Don't just hack at it.  Remember,
the Bytesaber is the weapon of the Red-eye Night.  It is used to trim offensive
lines of code.  Excess handwaving won't get you anywhere.  Listen for the
Carrier."

Luke turned back to the drone, which was humming quietly in the air next to
him.  This time Luke's actions complemented the drone's attacks perfectly.

Con Solo, being an unimaginative hacker, was not impressed.  "Forget this
bit-slicing stuff.  Give me a good ROM blaster any day."

"~~j~~hhji~~," said Kenobie, with no clear inflection.  He fell silent for a
few seconds, and reasserted his control.

"What happened?" asked Luke.

"Strange," said PDP-1.  "I felt a momentary glitch in the Carrier.  It's
equalized now."

"We're coming up on user space," called Solo from the CSR.  As they
cruised safely through stack frames, the emerged in the new context only
to be bombarded by freeblocks.

"What the..." gasped Solo.  The screen showed clearly:
               /usr/alderaan: not found
"It's the right inode, but it's been cleared!  Twoie, where's the nearest
file?"

"3 to 5 there's one..." the Bookie started to say, but was interrupted by
a bright flash off to the left.

"Imperial TTY fighters!" shouted Solo.  "A whole DZ of them!  Where are they
coming from?"

"Can't be far from the host system," said Kenobie.  "They all have direct EIA
connections."

As Solo began to give chase, the ship lurched suddenly.  Luke noticed the
link count was at 3 and climbing rapidly.

"This is no regular file," murmured Kenobie.  "Look at the ODS directory
structure ahead!  They seem to have us in a tractor beam."

"There's no way we'll unlink in time," said Solo.  "We're going in."
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gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <[email protected]>
of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/


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